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Working Paper

Monetary Policy with Judgment

We consider two approaches to incorporate judgment into DSGE models. First, Bayesian estimation indirectly imposes judgment via priors on model parameters, which are then mapped into a judgmental interest rate decision. Standard priors are shown to be associated with highly unrealistic judgmental decisions. Second, judgmental interest rate decisions are directly provided by the decision maker and incorporated into a formal statistical decision rule using frequentist procedures. When the observed interest rates are interpreted as judgmental decisions, they are found to be consistent with DSGE models for long stretches of time, but excessively tight in the 1980s and late 1990s and excessively loose in the late 1970s and early 2000s.

Working Papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded official Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Federal Reserve System.


Suggested Citation

Gelain, Paolo, and Simone Manganelli. 2020. “Monetary Policy with Judgment.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper No. 20-14. https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-202014